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WeLoop, in cooperation with DealeXtreme, will release released the US$70 $75 Tommy smart watch on September 15, 2014. This table compares the technical specifications of the Tommy and Pebble smart watches; superior specs are highlighted in bold text.
Edit 2014-10-13: Updated prices
Edit 2014-12-11: WeLoop will release an SDK

OK, let’s see how tiny the pixels on a screen need to be to make it a retina display for you. To do this, we’ll calculate the smallest pixels that you can resolve at a given distance. For example, if you have 20/20, or 1 arc minute, vision and hold a smartphone 11 inches (28 cm) away, you’ll be able to resolve individual pixels if there are 313 pixels per inch (123 pixels/cm) or fewer; if it has more pixels than that per inch/cm (i.e. higher pixel density & smaller pixels), then it’s a “retina display”.

Here’s how to calculate the minimum number of pixels per distance to match your eyes (fill in your visual resolution in place of “1“:

In more detail: to calculate the pixel size, s, opposite the viewer divide the angle, a, in half to give a right triangle with the viewing distance, d, adjacent to the angle and the length of ½ of a pixel opposite. 1 arc minute = 1/60 degree. Then with basic trigonometry:

A 42-inch diagonal, full HD television (1920×1080) also happens to have 52 pixels per inch; therefore, when viewed from 5-½ feet or farther the pixels begin to blur together for 20/20 vision. Homework: how close/far should you sit from your television to turn it into a “retina” display? Enjoy!

When Apple announced their iPad in January, my initial reaction was skepticism. Why would the iPad succeed where other tablets have failed for the past twenty years? After trying one out, the answer turns out to lie in the iPad operating system named “iPhone OS” “iOS”.¹ iOS elegantly solves two critical problems that have plagued past tablets:

First, poor on-screen input has kept tablet computers cornered into niche “stand-up” computing markets where people have to tolerate difficult touchscreen input because they have no place to sit down to use a keyboard. Success for tablets was restricted to workplaces such as package delivery, patient care, and inventory management. The iPhone’s on-screen keyboard, however, finally conquered the touchscreen input problem and obsoleted physical keyboards on app-phones. Apple’s expansion of their on-screen keyboard solution to the larger iPad frees it from the first deficiency of the tablet world.

Hardware solves the second problem. Tablets must remain compact and lightweight for portability, respond quickly to dynamic inputs, and provide long battery life for folks in the field all day. Moore’s Law has annually doubled hardware capacity for over forty years and so you might reasonably expect that today’s computers would be blindingly fast and run on sunshine. Today’s CPUs are exponentially faster; for example, my first tablet computer, built nearly two decades ago sported a paltry 0.02 GHz “i386 SL microprocessor which [was then] several generations ahead”, but it still starts up and runs about as fast as modern hardware running Microsoft Vista. What happened to all of that computer power from Moore’s law advances!? It turns out that the coercive monopoly software vendor has continuously squandered that wealth of capacity on bloat-ware and left the end-user experience wallowing along at “sluggish”.

Apple’s iPad resolved the hardware problem by exploiting this bloat-ware gap. By rigorously keeping iOS lean, they unleash the hardware’s real capacity to deliver a superb UI. While Apple’s hardware team delivered relatively standard hardware components, that standard hardware in 2010 is several thousand times faster than my original tablet and new lithium polymer batteries hold four to six times the energy of their older NiMH and NiCAD brethren. With a great battery life and decades of Moore’s law advances to spend, the software team under Scott Forstall erased the bloat and delivered an OS where less (code) truly is more (usable). The iPad user experience is astonishingly engaging and a quantum leap ahead of anything else in the market. Even the fastest x86 computers, oozing GHz and dimming the lights for miles around, cannot throw off the shackles of traditional software to deliver the iPad’s user experience. The larger screen on the iPad delivers a substantively expanded experience beyond its app-phone predecessors.

Apple’s latest offering, using only modest hardware, leaps at your touch and then quickly gets out of the way allowing you to engage directly with your content. Comparing the iPad UI with other tablets is like comparing the experience of picking up a toy with your own hand versus using The Claw to snatch that toy from a vending machine. Your own hand’s motion barely registers in your consciousness; you just have the toy and using the iPad feels the same way. “The Claw” UI from other OS’s, in contrast, occupies your consciousness so completely that your content gets forgotten altogether. The iPad readily evokes comparison with Stephenson’s A Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer or perhaps it’s actually one of Roddenberry’s Star Trek PADDs that was misdelivered a century too early and on the other side of San Francisco. Hopefully other vendors will get the message. The iPad cold boots in under 20 seconds, starts apps seemingly instantly and has access to the largest set of online books (iBooks, Kindle App, Barnes & Noble, Google Books, Wikipedia, etc…) and movies (iTunes, Netflix, YouTube, etc…) ever assembled in on a single device. Oh, and if you need to get some work done, there’s an app for that too. Multitasking arrivesd this fall.¹

MobileMe got beat up in the blogosphere this summer, but Apple’s free trial with my new iPhone was too good to pass up. For me, it’s been great. I like the UI and it’s great to have access using whatever computer I happen to be near. So far, so good. I’m new to the service and so I don’t miss the features that I never used; that seemed to be one of the main complaints.

With good experiences behind me, I decided to go for the $40/year renewal plan (60% discount) and ordered a new .mac version 4.0 retail package with an activation code good for one year. In this case, $40 wasn’t absolutely the lowest price available, however, the extra few dollars seemed worth it to use a well rated amazon.com vendor and avoid the scammers who misrepresent used codes as new.

While I was away for Thanksgiving, MobileMe wound up automatically renewing and billed my credit card for the full $99 price. I returned today and contacted MobileMe support who created yet another reason to compliment MobileMe! The online chat support from Adam C. made it quick and painless to get a refund on my credit card and switch the renewal over to the .mac activation code. Thank you Apple!

What’s the main purpose of a mobile phone? Phone calls! My last conference call opened with one of the primary speakers explaining that he was late because “Windows Mobile froze while I was entering the meeting ID and I had to reboot my phone”. Windows Mobile users are probably nodding their heads in sympathy while Symbian (Nokia), PalmOS and iPhone folks are shaking their heads in disbelief. Microsoft seemingly forgot that phones need to reliably make, well, phone calls.

Misbehaving “third party” applications usually get the blame for Windows Mobile crashes, but the real fault lies in the OS’s architecture. Application isolation is a fundamental requirement of an OS but Microsoft’s Windows Mobile still has plenty of weaknesses eight years on. You can choose to avoid third party apps to help avoid their flaws, however, the phone loses much of its appeal then and, even then, it’s still not as stable as dedicated phones! The iPhone is no saint either but its watchdog does kill hanging processes far more effectively than Windows Mobile. I’ve never had a problem with the iPhone’s Phone app (knocking on wood). Restrictions against 3rd background apps (aka high cost to license) help to stabilize both PalmOS phones and Apple’s iPhone. While these restrictions avoid stalled phones, they also limit the platforms’ potential. Let’s hope that Android and webOS will do better.